A gunman killed four people and wounded two others in Herkimer County recently. The gunman was killed after a 19-hour standoff and gun battle at an abandoned building where he had taken refuge.

Compounding this tragedy is the question of why the police and FBI strapped a camera to a young, 2-year old German Shepherd and sent it into the building to determine what was going on inside. Clearly, if the gunman were still alive, they were sending this animal to certain death – which is indeed what happened.

I know that these dogs are not “pets” and are trained to face great risks when necessary. However, advanced robotics are now available to law enforcement to enter high risk places with cameras. Or, alternatively, couldn’t the gunman have been flushed out using old fashioned techniques such as tear gas?

The decision to use this young police dog for such a task seems cruel, irresponsible and a waste of a valuable asset. I urge the FBI to re-evaluate its policies regarding use of animals.

SHERRY S. KRAUS

Rochester

Include cigars in tobacco rules

In 2009, Congress passed historic, bipartisan legislation to give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate the production, marketing and sales of all tobacco products for the first time.

Yet, the public health protection this law provides is now being threatened by a new effort in the House of Representatives to exempt cigars from regulation. Cigars cause disease and death, and just like cigarettes, they should be subject to FDA regulation.

Representative Richard Hanna should fight to keep tobacco control on track on behalf of everyone in the Mohawk Valley with tobacco-related disease. Cosponsoring this measure would send the wrong message about the dangers of cigars.

This bill is bad for public health and it must be stopped.

JOAN FARMER

Yorkville

Minimum wage bad compromise

The New York Legislature’s minimum wage deal is a compromise of the worst kind, where a terrible policy is paired with token tax breaks in the hope that the latter will minimize the damage of the former.

This approach has been tried before. Federal lawmakers tied the 2007-09 minimum wage increase to a series of temporary tax breaks for businesses. Yet economists at Miami and Trinity Universities found that over 114,000 young adults were priced out of job opportunities as a result.

That’s unfortunate news for the state’s teenagers, who already suffer from a 28.4 percent unemployment rate.

Statements that Cuomo’s appearance “seemed” opportunistic and it would have “‘appeared”’ less politically motivated had he waited until the crisis was resolved to express regret are flimsy.

For the governor to arrive while the situation remained dangerous rather than wait until the coast was clear should be viewed as positive rather than due to some nefarious political motivation. Had he not arrived when he did, he would have been accused of avoiding an area of New York whose populace has openly been critical of his positions, especially with regard to the SAFE Act.

We don’t need the mediums we rely on for local information to add their own suspicions and conjectures to something as benign as a governor travelling a mere 80 miles to show support in a crisis situation.

Society already has too many entertainers disguised as political pundits distorting the news, and they are quite successful in keeping this country divided.

The O-D editorial board engaged in the same ploy, though the purpose of their editorials are to “spur progress and debate” according to the mission statement.